A Syntactic Analysis of Chinese Poet Qu Yuan’s Ju Song-

Hymn to the Orange Tree

(The Translated Version of Xu Yuanchong)

Beth

Abstract

“Ju Song”, written by the first and greatest Chines patriotic poet Qu Yuan, is the first

Chinese poem of chanting things. It was translated into “Hymn to the Orange Tree” by Xu

Yuanchong. When Chinese poems are translated into English, they are supposed to have

the syntactic features of English poems such as lexical deviation, syntactical deviation

and use of rhetoric. This paper has a syntactic analysis of ten sentences from “Hymn to

the Orange Tree” based on Chomsky’s transformational grammar. The findings show that

Xu’s translation of the poem employs deviation such as neologism, minor sentences,

preposing, fronting, postponement, participial construction, and rhetoric such as simile

and personification to create specific effect like rhyme and rhythm, balance, emphasis,

creation of desired imagery and symbolism. His arrangement of language conveys the

beauty in original poem to the English readers.

Key words: “Hymn to the Orange Tree”, transformational grammar, deviation, rhetoric

Introduction

While Western culture has “The Bible” and Greek mythologies as its two sources,

Chinese poetry has its sources in “The Book of Poetry” (“Shi Jing”) compiled in the 6th

century B.C. and “Elegies of the South” (“Chu Ci”) composed in the 3rd. They start the

tradition of realism and romanticism in Chinese poems separately. The former is

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collective wisdom of common people along the Yellow River in North China, while the

latter is a collection of individual creation, the creation by poets of the largest State of

Chu along the Blue River or the Yangzi Valley in the south. It is rooted in Shamanism,

and almost half of them are traditionally ascribed to Qu Yuan.

Qu Yuan (340-278 B.C.) was the most important Chu poet and the greatest lyrical

poet in China. He began many traditions. For example, he began the age of individual

creation of literary works; he created his own literary style, and began the tradition of

using the beauty to symbolize the king, and fragrant plants to represent loyal ministers.

According to Xu (2011), Qu’s long poem “Li Sao” or “Sorrow after Departure” in Xu’s

translation, in certain sense, may run parallel with Homer’s “Odessy” 500 years earlier

and with Dante’s “Divine Comedy” 1,500 years later (p.4). He describes his love and

loyalty for his king and his native state, his disappointment and grief over the corruptions

in the society and his pursuit for ideals on imaginary journeys in a chariot drawn by

dragon and phoenix to Heaven in “Sorrow after Departure”. Another of his great long

poem “Tian Wen”, which is translated into “Asking Heaven” by Xu, also ranks as greatest

poems in world literature. In the poem, he shows his philosophical thoughts on the

Universe. Xu (2011) compares it with the “ Book of Job” in the “Holy Bible” (p. 9).

Qu Yuan is respected and followed as a great example by the later Chinese literary

men not only for his literary talent, but also for his noble character, pure heart and

patriotism. He has become a symbol of Chinese culture. When State of Chu was

threatened by the rising powerful State of Qin, Qu Yuan proposed reform in the

government and showed a diplomatic talent in forming alliance with other states.

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However, the king of Chu, who had trusted and relied on him at first, gradually lost

confidence in him and banished him because the profit-seeking ministers accepted bribes

from Qin’s envoy and said bad words of him. However, he did not give up his king and

his native state. At last, after Chu falls, Qu Yuan threw himself into the Mi Lo River. The

local people rushed into their boats to search for him while throwing rice into the waters

to appease the river dragons, from which evolved the tradition of boat racing and the

custom of eating rice dumplings on the Dragon Boat Festival, one of three most important

festivals in China. This festival is also celebrated in many East Asian Countries.

The brilliant wealth of Chinese traditional literature should be spread in the world as

a medium for intercultural communication. However, “Chu Ci” were not translated into

other languages until the 18th century. Most of the translations are either prose in form,

losing the beauty in form and sound, or the translation, though achieved rhyme and

linguistic beauty, are too free and strayed away from the original meaning. Among the

translators of this book, there are Hawkes, Arthur Waley, Robert Payne, Yang Xianyi and

Gladys Yang, Xu Yuanchong and Sun Dayu, to mention some of them. In this paper, we

adopt Xu’s translation and all the English names of Qu Yuan’s works are from Xu’s

translation.

Professor Xu translated many Chinese literary classics into English or French, such

as “Book of Poetry”, “Elegies of the South”, “300 Tang Poems”, “300 Song Lyrics” and

so on. From his experience of poetry translation, he put forward the famous theory of

“Three Beauties”, namely beauty in meaning, beauty in sound, and beauty in form. His

translations gain popularity both in China and in the West.

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 When translating Chinese poems into English, the translators are supposed to

consider the syntactic features of English poems.

The present paper is aimed to study the syntactic features of “Hymn to the Orange

Tree”, which is the translation of Qu Yuan’s “Ju Song” by professor Xu Yuanchong and

know about realization of beauty in form, in sound and in meaning. Research questions

include: 1). What kind of syntactic features are involved in “Hymn to the Orange Tree”?

2). What effects are created by these syntactic features?

The study on English translation of Chinese traditional poems will help us have a

better understanding on the syntactic features of English poems, contribute to the

excellent translation of Chinese classic poems and promote the intercultural

communication of the East and the West.

Why is “Hymn to the Orange Tree” other than other poems of Qu Yuan chosen for

analysis in this paper? This poem gains him the honor of “Father of Yongwu Poetry

(poetry chanting things)” and following it, poems of this kind began to flourish and

constitute a great part of Chinese poetry. In addition, although it is not the most famous

poem by Qu Yuan, it is proper in length and complexity. What’s more, the poem is

chanted to several tunes nowadays and appear in the TV serials telling the ancient stories.

The author likes the poem very much. Most importantly, the tree in the poem is symbolic

of the poet’s virtue. The above are the reasons that the author chose this poem of Qu Yuan

other than others for analysis.

The ode, with 144 Chinese characters in 18 lines, praises the orange tree, depicting in

general and in every detail its external and inner beauty such as its deep root, green leaves,

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white flowers, thick branches, defensive pines and fine fruits. The poet describes the tree

in a way that its image stands out as lovely, independent, truthful and respectable. The

image of the tree is symbolic of the noble character. The poem has nine stanzas, which

fall into two echoing parts, with the first half focusing on description and external beauty,

and the second on inner beauty and emotions.

Most studies on this poem of Qu Yuan are done from the perspective of sociology,

exploring some controversial issues concerning the poem, such as its period of creation

and its symbolic meaning. For example, is the poem created in the early or in the later life

of the poet? Is the orange tree in the poem symbolic of the poet himself, or a pupil of Qu

Quan? Is it symbolic of the king of Chu, or the army rebelling against Qin after the fall of

Chu? Xu adopts the view that it was probably written by Qu Yuan in his earlier days, and

is symbolic of the poet’s virtue.

However, studies on the poem from a linguistic view are few. Even few are the studies

on the English version of the poem from a syntactic perspective. Qian and Liu (2018)

studied how to reserve Chinese cultural element in translating “Cu Ci” into English,

exemplified by the translation of two of Qu Yuan’s poems, “Ju Song” and “Guo Shang”.

The theoretical frame work of this paper is Chomsky’s transformational grammar.

Chomsky (1965) in “Aspects of the Theory of Syntax” proposed that “a generative

grammar must be a system of rules that can iterate to generate an indefinitely large

number of structures” (p.15). He then developed the idea of deep structure and surface

structure in this book, “Underlying each sentence of the language there is a sequence of

base Phrase-markers, each generated by the base of the syntactic component” (p.17). “In

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addition to its base, the syntactic component of a generative grammar contains a

transformational sub component. This is concerned with generating a sentence, with its

surface structure, from its basis” (ibid). In general, language has inner hierarchic rules

which describes the regular syntactic structure. Each sentence in a language has two

levels of representation, the deep structure and the surface structure. The deep structure

represents the core semantic relations of a sentence, and surface structure is derived from

the deep structure. Transformational grammar involves the use of defined operations

called transformations to produce new sentences from existing ones.

Poetic language often break regular syntactic rules and involves transformational

movement of constituents to the marked position. The poets, in an aspiration for free

expression of emotions, and for the effect of rhyme and rhythm, surprise, emphasis,

desired images, symbolic meanings and so on, often derive ungrammatical sentence

structure from the grammatical ones. They often arrange their words in an order different

from the ordinary language, or deviate from the expected lexical selection, or use the

language in an figurative way. Khalil (2011) listed the syntactic features of English poetry

in two categories: 1).deviations, including lexical deviation and syntactic deviation; 2).

figure of speech such as metonymy, simile, metaphor, personification, images, irony.

Lexical deviation includes neologism, or the invention of new words, unexpected lexical

selection and so on. Syntactic deviation includes minor sentences (sentences without a

finite verb), the successive genitives, hyperbaton, word order(fronting, postponement and

discontinuity), pleonasm, ellipses, repetition, passivization (agentive passive and

agentless passive) and so on.

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Methodology

The data for analysis are ten sentences chosen from “Hymn to the Orange Tree”,

which is the English translation of a Chinese poem written by Qu Yuan, and which is

collected in “Elegies of The South” (Xu, 2011). The author copied the poem from this

book.

There are nine stanzas and each stanza in English version has four lines

corresponding to each stanza of two lines in Chinese version. The author choose ten

sentences covering every stanza, and marked them from 1 to 10. Both the English version

and Chinese version of the whole poem are listed on the appendices page. And the ten

sentences for analysis are marked with numbers in the whole poem, too.

Data Analysis

In this part, the author looks into the syntactic features of the chosen ten sentences,

and the effects they achieve. By doing this, we may feel Xu’s “Three Beauties” in

translating the Chinese poem into English by applying syntactic rules in English and

appreciate the charm of Qu Yuan and his works.

Before the analysis of the ten sentences, we have to mention that in the poem, Qu

Yuan uses the Chinese character “ 兮 ”, a modal particle, at the end of each line for the

purpose of a parallel structure and tune. Xu translates it into the word “oh”, and puts it at

the end of the second and fourth line in each stanza. This is different from the natural

syntactic order in English, in which “oh” often comes at the beginning of the sentence.

But putting “oh” at the end, the translation reserves the syntactic feature of the source

language on the one hand, and soften the tone on the other hand.

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 The following is the syntactic analysis of the ten sentences.

1. “Fair tree on earth without a peer,

Laden with oranges, you grow here, oh!”

Sentence 1 involves syntactic deviation in two ways, minor sentence without a finite

verb and participial construction.

Firstly, “ Fair tree on earth without a peer” is a minor sentence without a finite verb.

There is only a NP with PP. The deep structure could be SVC. Xu modified the English

grammatical structure in order to keep the original flavor of Chinese sentence on the one

hand, and to create a sense of timelessness on the other hand. The NP of “ fair tree” is

directly followed by the PP “on earth” and “without a peer”, thus, the orange tree is set

against the grand background of the universe, beyond time span. The tree becomes one

with the universe. However, the tree stands alone there. The image of the tree becomes

awe-inspiring, independent and lofty.

Secondly, in “Laden with oranges, you grow here, oh!”, participial construction of

“laden with orange”take the place of clause. This is for the sake of economy, balanced

form, and rhyme. Besides, with the participial construction, the tree stands out as very

fruitful, heavy with oranges.

In conclusion, the employment of syntactic deviation helps to bring out the image

of the tree as awesome as well as lovely, independent and lofty yet practical for use. In

this way, the two lines set the basic tone for the whole poem.

2. Your root’s too deep from us to depart;

What’s more, you have a single heart, oh!

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 Sentence 2 applies PP preposing and personification.

There is no dot between the two lines, which are closely related in meaning, with

“root” and “heart” echoing to each other, “deep” and “single” echoing to each other. Thus,

they are treated as one sentence.

In “Your root’s too deep from us to depart”, the PP “from us” is complement of the V

“depart”. It should have closely followed the verb “depart” and form the phrasal structure

of V PP. But it is preposed and make the structure of “too... to” discontinuous. In natural

order, the sentence should be “ Your root’s too deep to depart from us”.

The preposing is on the one hand for the purpose of rhyme, realizing the beauty of

sound, and on the other hand, for the purpose of highlighting the close relationship

between the tree and “us”, namely, the southern land, the State of Chu. It emphasizes that

the tree can only stay with “us”, and grow on this land. This is the physical feature of

orange trees, which yield juicy and sweet fruits if planted in the south, while yield bitter

and small ones if planted in the north. This physical feature in the poet’s eye is the

character of single-mindedness. The orange tree can not depart from its native soil and the

poet is loyal to his motherland.

The second syntactic feature is personification by the use of the word “heart”. In this

way, the poet seems to write on a tree and also seems to write on a person.

3. Your branches thick armed with sharp pine

Are laden with fruit round and fine, oh!

Sentence 3 involves the use of postponement of modifying adjectives and

personification.

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 In this sentence, the word “armed” triggers personification. Besides, the adjective

“thick” and the adjective phrase “round and fine” are moved from unmarked position in

front of a noun to marked position behind a noun. The deep structure should be Ap N.

the phrases in natural order should be “thick branches” and “round and fine fruits”

respectively. The violation of natural word order has the following effects. In addition to

the consideration for rhyme, it also emphasizes the vigor of the branches and the beauty

of the fruits. What’s more, the transformation also creates an effect of contrast between

“pine” and “fine”. Though the tree grow pines, it is for the purpose of self-defence and for

producing “fruits fine”. Growing pines becomes a fine character of the tree, too.

4. Within you are pure, without your are bright,

Like a man virtuous and right, oh!

PP fronting, simile and postponement of adjectives are employed in sentence 4.

Firstly, there is fronting of two propositions “within” and “without”, serving as

adverbials, and there is also the rhetoric of simile triggered by “like”. What’s more, there

is also postponement of adjective phrase “virtuous and right”, which is the modifier of

“man”. Put in an natural order, it should be “Oh! You are pure within, and you are bright

without, like a virtuous and right man”. The fronting of “within” and “without” make the

sentence neat and beautiful in form, and creates an effect of contrast. The postponement

of adjective phrases emphasizes the virtue of the man. Together, the fronting and the

postponement form the rhyme and realize the beauty in form. The simile compares the

tree to a man in a clear way, connecting the man and the tree in their good character. It

helps bring out the symbolic meaning of the orange tree.

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5. Grown up, independent you stand.

In sentence 5, adjective fronting and personification are used.

Firstly, there is adjective fronting. The Adj “independent”, which serves as the

complement, is moved in front of the V “stand”. The surface structure is CSV. The deep

structure is SVC. The sentence in normal order should be “Grown up, you stand

independent”. The fronting of the Adj highlights the character of “independence” of the

tree, or of the man. Secondly, the V “stand” trigger the rhetoric of personification. This

helps bring out the symbolic meaning of the poem. At last, the participial construction

“grown up” serves as adverbial instead of an adverbial clause. This is for the purpose of

balanced form.

6. You stand alone in this world wide,

Unyielding to the vulgar tide, oh!

In sentence 6, personification, postponement of adjective, and participial construction

are employed.

To begin with, the use of V “stand”, the participial “unyielding” and the Adj “vulgar”

involves the rhetoric of personification. They are all supposed to select a N or NP which

refers to “human” semantically. But here “stand” and “unyielding” are used to refer to the

action of a tree and “vulgar” modifies the N “tide”. In this way, the orange tree is

personified to refer to the poet, who is independent and rebellious, while “tide” is

personified to refer to the crowd who go with the tide for self-interest.

Besides, the Adj of “wide” is postponed behind the noun, to rhyme with “tide”, and

to gain emphasis. In this way, “wide” stands out to contrast with “alone”, showing that the

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poet is different from the mass of the world in keeping his faith.

7. So selfless, you have virtue high,

And become one with earth and sky, oh!

Sentence 7 employs alliteration, personification and postponement of adjective.

Firslty, “so selfless” form alliteration for the sake of rhythm. Secondly, the Adj

“selfless” and the N “virtue” trigger personification to bring out the symbolic meaning of

the poem and show the good character of the poet. Thirdly, the Adj “high” is moved from

its unmarked position as a front modifier to a marked position following the N “virtue”.

This is for the purpose of rhyme as well as for the sake of emphasizing the good quality

of the orange tree and the poet.

8. All the trees fade by the year’s end;

I will forever be your friend, oh!

In sentence 8, the preposing of adverb is employed.

The adverb “forever”, which serves as an adverbial and comes at the end of a

sentence in the deep structure, is preposed between the “will” and “be”, which cause

discontinuity of the Aux “will” and the V “be”. The preposing of the adverbial to give

emphasis on the poet’s determination to be like the orange tree and to show that the poet

will never change his mind. In this way, the poet is completely connected with the orange

tree and the symbolic meaning of the tree becomes very clear. What’s more, with

“forever” moved from its original place, “friend” and “end” form rhymes.

9.You are free from sin, so pure and bright,

And your trunk is ever upright, oh!

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 Sentence 9 uses personification.

In this sentence there is the rhetoric of personification exemplified by “You are free

from sin”. The N “sin” is semantically connected to human beings in normal grammar,

but here the the PP “free from sin”, the complement of “you”, defines a tree. Besides,

“sin” has a religious color and is characteristic of the Western culture. The use of “sin”

conforms to the aesthetics of the English readers and helps them have a better

understanding of the symbolic meaning of the poem.

10. You’re an example and inspirer,

And I am your humble admirer, oh!

Sentence 10 employs personification and neologism, or the invention of new words.

Firstly, there is the rhetoric of personification as is shown in “You’re an example and

inspirer”. The orange tree is compared to the great men who set the example and whose

good qualities inspire others. By the use of personification, the poem brings the symbolic

meaning of the tree to a perfect conclusion. Secondly, we also notice that “inspirer” is

created by professor Xu to create the effect of rhyme in sound and to echo with “admirer”

in form.

Conclusion

Guo Moruo, an authority on Qu Yuan studies concluded that “Few poets indeed in

the world can rival Qu Yuan in his sincerity, imaginative power and brilliance, nor in the

wealth of imagery, lyrical qualities and diversity of forms of his poems. A poet who had

such deep love for his country and his people, for freedom and justice, will forever be

remembered.” (qtd in Xu 13).

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 The great minds can become the symbol of a nation. By translating their works into

other languages in an excellent way, we spread their thoughts and promote intercultural

communication.

Poetry language is marked, different from ordinary language in other genres in

lexical, syntactic and grammatical rules. English poetry is characteristic of

transformational movement of constituents and deviate from the normal grammar. From

the analysis of ten sentences in the poem, it can be seen that Xu’s translation of the poem

conforms to the syntactic features of English poems to gain the acceptance of the English

readers and to provoke their interest, although he also reserves some features of the

original poem. The syntactic features illustrated in this poem include lexical deviation

( neologism), syntactic deviation (minor sentence, participial construction, preposing of

pp, preposing of adverb, PP fronting, Adj fronting, Adj postponement, and alliteration),

and rhetoric (personification and simile). The most frequently used syntactic rule is Adj

movement, mainly Adj postponement, which appears five times. This is to achieve rhyme

and to depict in highlight some characteristics of the orange tree. The rhetoric of

personification appears six times. This is because by using personification, the tree and

the poet is connected to each other.

All the syntactic features exemplified in the ten sentences of the poem create the

following effects: rhyme and rhythm, balanced form, description of emphasized aspects,

creation of the desired image and the bringing out of the symbolic meaning. It is also seen

that Xu’s translation, by applying to syntactic rules in English, transfers the phonetic,

syntactic and semantic beauty of the original poem successfully. It achieves beauty in

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sound, in form and in meaning.

In conclusion, by having a syntactic analysis of Qu Yuan’s poem “ Hymn to the

Orange Tree”, in which, the tree is symbolic of the poet himself, we have a glimpse into

the poet’s noble character, his great literary talent, powerful imagination and grand

imagery.

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References

Chomsky, N. (1965). English aspects of the theory of syntax (2nd ed.). Cambridge: MIT

Press. Retrieved from www.colinphillips.net/wp-content/.../chomsky1965-ch1.pdf

Khalil, H.N. (2011). Syntactic aspects of poetry: A pragmatic perspective. Language and

Literature Studies. 2, 37-54. doi:10.5539/ells.v1n2p37.

Qian, M.Y. & Liu, H. (2018). A Study on the English translation of Chu Ci based on

Chinese culture heritage - Exemplified by English Version of Guo Shang and Ju Song.

Journal of Yancheng Teachers College（Humanities ＆ Social Sciences Edition）. 38(1),

69-72. doi: 10.16401/j. cnki. ysxb. 1003 -6873.2018. 01.014

Retrieved from bianke.cnki.net/Web/Article/YCSZ201801014.html

Xu, Y. C. (Trans.). (2011). Elegies of the south. Beijing, BJ: China Intercontinental Press.

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 Appendices

Hymn to the Orange Tree

1. Fair tree on earth without a peer,

Laden with oranges, you grow here, oh!

You are destined not to be moved

In the southern land you are loved, oh!

2. Your root’s too deep from us to depart;

What’s more, you have a single heart, oh!

You have green leaves and flowers white.

What an exuberant delight, oh!

3.Your branches thick armed with sharp pine

Are laden with fruit round and fine, oh!

A riot of yellow and green,

What a dazzling splendid scene, oh!

4. Within you are pure, without your are bright,

Like a man virtuous and right, oh!

Luxuriant and trimmed, you thrive,

No blemish but charm’s kept alive, oh!

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 While young, you aspire as you please,

Quite different from other trees, oh!

5. Grown up, independent you stand.

How you are admired in southern land, oh.

You are too deep-rooted to transplant;

Seeking nothing, you are so exuberant, oh!

6.You stand alone in this world wide,

Unyielding to the vulgar tide, oh!

You seal your heart and act with care;

You’ve done nothing wrong anywhere, oh!

7. So selfless, you have virtue high,

And become one with earth and sky, oh!

8. All the trees fade by the year’s end;

I will forever be your friend, oh!

9.You are free from sin, so pure and bright,

And your trunk is ever upright, oh!

Although you appear young in view,

Even the old may learn from you, oh!

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10. You’re and example and inspirer,

And I am your humble admirer, oh!

(translated by Xu, 2011, p. 91-93)

橘颂

屈原

后皇嘉树，橘徕服兮。

受命不迁，生南国兮。

深固难徙，更壹志兮。

绿叶素荣，纷其可喜兮。

曾枝剡棘，圆果抟兮。

青黄杂糅，文章烂兮。

精色内白，类可任兮。

纷緼宜修，姱而不丑兮。

嗟尔幼志，有以异兮。

独立不迁，岂不可喜兮?

深固难徙，廓其无求兮。

苏世独立，横而不流兮。

闭心自慎，终不失过兮。

秉德无私，参天地兮。

愿岁并谢，与长友兮。

淑离不淫，梗其有理兮。

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年岁虽少，可师长兮。

行比伯夷，置以为像兮。

20